


Compress and Elevate

by APgeeksout



Category: NXT
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Sharing a Bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-12
Updated: 2019-05-12
Packaged: 2020-03-02 08:39:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,953
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18807631
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/APgeeksout/pseuds/APgeeksout
Summary: “You mean I get painkillers and a ride in your 'sweet Mustang'?" Adam asked, drawing out 'sweet Mustang' in a way that made it undisputedly clear he was making fun of Ricochet (and more than a little likely that he was kinda high).





	Compress and Elevate

**Author's Note:**

  * For [RedLeaderfic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RedLeaderfic/gifts).



> Set after a fictitious NXT touring show taking place shortly after Ricochet’s main roster call-up/while things are tense with The Undisputed Era.

"You mean I get painkillers _and_ a ride in your 'sweet Mustang'?" Adam asked, drawing out 'sweet Mustang' in a way that made it undisputedly clear he was making fun of Ricochet (and more than a little likely that he was kinda high).

"Vroom, vroom," he agreed, opening the passenger-side door for him and refusing to take the bait.

"Look at Mr. Chivalrous. You don't have to be so nice, you know." Adam settled into the low-slung seat with a hiss of a breath and a grimace that he quickly turned into a leer when he caught Ricochet watching him. "I'll still let you blow me, even if you don't treat me like your prom date."

"Keep talking, and I'll “let you” ride in the trunk." He shut the door firmly, before Cole could reach out to do it with his swollen arm, and rounded the car to his side, scanning for any scrapes or door dings from the time his baby had been unattended in the hospital parking garage.

"I'm at the Comfort Inn off of 24," Adam said after a minute, when they had left the garage for the streets of downtown Paducah, mostly empty of pedestrians and other traffic as the city wound down itself down, late of a Sunday night.

"Maybe you were," he said, making the next turn on an aging yellow light. "Now you're in my spare room."

“What? No offense - actually, no, I take that back; there’s definitely some offense here - but I don’t want to come to your sleepover party.”

He cast a scowl at the passenger seat, where Adam was slumped against the leather, his right arm swathed in coldpacks and cradled stiffly against his chest. “I’m not inviting you over to braid your hair and stay up late talking about boys,” he said, and turned onto the quiet side street that would take them into his neighborhood. “Someone’s got to check your head out tonight, and it’s not my fault that you don’t have any friends on this tour.”

“Hey!” Adam protested. “I’m a wounded man here! You can stop rubbing the salt in any time.”

“Why would I? When you pout, you’re almost as cute as you think you are.” He eased into the driveway, took the car out of gear, and killed the ignition, letting the low rumble of the engine go quiet. “Play your cards right, and I just might let you blow me.”

* * *

“Shower’s in here,” he said, setting Adam’s gym bag on the bathroom countertop. “Clean towels in that cabinet. Epsom salts under the sink, if you want to, like, soak instead.” He pointed, and then looked back at where Adam slouched against the doorframe. “Will you need any help, do you think?”

Adam smirked, a sharp expression that didn’t do anything to disguise the deepening shadows beneath his bloodshot eyes or the pained crease in his forehead. “You offering to scrub my back? Wash my hair for me?”

“Think I wouldn’t?” he scoffed. “Ought to know better than to play chicken with me, boy.”

Adam snorted out a laugh. “Yeah, ok,” he said, making the hand gesture and everything. “I’ll be sure to remember that, chief.” He came further into the room and sank less-than-gracefully onto the closed lid of the toilet.

Ricochet did a quick count-up of the hours since the show, of how long he’d waited for the scan to confirm a nasty sprain instead of anything broken, a guesstimate of how empty his stomach would have been by the time the ER doc gave him something for the swelling and the pain. “You hungry? I don’t have a lot in the fridge right now,” he started, - heading back on the road starting tomorrow, he’d already run through most of the perishables in the house - “but I can probably scramble up some eggs?”

Adam perked up, like he was fully prepared to find some way to give him shit about that offer too, but then he just sighed and let his smile go crooked. He looked tired still, but also annoyingly pretty, and Ricochet was pretty sure he knew it, too. “Fuck. That sounds really good, actually.”

“Don’t sound so surprised. All my ideas are good.”

Adam only smirked at that; there were a whole lot of ways to describe the two of them sneaking around arenas, rubbing off together in secret between matches, and they both knew “good idea” definitely wasn’t one of them. “Go on.” He made a feeble shooing gesture. “Get out of here. I’ll scream if I need you.”

“Fine. Just, don’t fall and break your head in my shower,” he said, and pushed away from the counter, moving for the door. “Those are not the headlines I wanted to make tonight!” He’d been thinking something more along the lines of: King Ricochet Takes NXT Crown in Homecoming Bout!

“Should’ve thought of that before you dragged me back here,” Adam called after him. “I could have been being pathetic and plotting revenge against Johnny Weasel in my hotel room.”

* * *

“No bread for toast,” he said, “but got some frozen waffles for when my nephew visits.”

Adam didn’t reply to that, but when Ricochet turned away from the stove, he was already lowering himself stiffly into one of his kitchen chairs, with one towel wrapped snug around his hips and a second on his head, twisted and tucked into a haphazard turban.

“That’s definitely a look,” he offered, and set a plate of scrambled eggs and a toaster waffle in front of him.

Adam gave him a scowl and slowly raised a middle finger - the left one, since his right arm was curled protectively over his belly, the puffy skin around his swollen wrist bruising into gnarly shades of purple and red and brown.

“So, you naked in my kitchen because you want me to do something about it, or because you can’t move well enough to get a shirt over your head?”

“It can be two things.”

He scoffed. “Think your moves need some work, playboy.”

Adam shrugged, and frowned when the motion jarred his arm. “Who needs moves? I figured you’d feel bad enough that I wouldn’t have to do any seducing.” He gave a less-than-full-strength leer. “Which is good, ‘cause I’ve had sexier nights.”

Truth be told, he _did_ feel pretty bad. It might have been Johnny Hides-in-the-Shadows who had set on him before the ring announcer had even started her spiel, Johnny Tire-Iron who had delivered the hit that knocked him off of the turnbuckle and into the third piece of their triple threat, but it had been Ricochet’s weight along with his own that Adam had caught on his wrist with his awkward landing, that had driven the air out of his lungs and knocked his hard head against the harder floor.

You should elevate that,” he tipped his head toward the wrist, “maybe re-wrap it?”

Adam shifted to rest his banged-up arm on the table top and raised an eyebrow at him. “I’m here because you wanted to play doctor, right? Feel free.”

He rolled his eyes, but then went to the pantry and dug a clean ACE bandage out of his stash. When he ducked back into the kitchen, Adam had shaken his hair loose from the towel, and it fell, damp and snarled, across his bowed shoulders and over his face, where he was bent over the table, his forehead propped against the heel of his good hand.

He stepped a little to his left, being sure to put some weight on the creaky floorboard, and gave Adam a beat to straighten up in the chair and pull a smirk back onto his face before he came back to his side.

He picked Adam’s hand up from the table, and they both hissed when Ricochet turned his palm up to check out the mottled bruises and start the wrap around his swollen joints.

“Sorry,” he said, and wound another layer of elastic wrap across the back of his hand. “Too tight?”

Adam just shook his head, clenched his jaw, and held his arm stiff in his grasp. The silence was nice, in theory, but Ricochet had a sneaking suspicion that he would actually have felt better if Adam were whining and talking shit.

By the time he finished wrapping and secured the loose edge of the bandage, Adam still hadn’t touched the food in front of him, just poked some eggs warily around the plate, even though he’d practically purred when Ricochet first brought up food.

Maybe the hour was making him morbid, but the thought came to him unexpectedly of the spooky bullshit Aleister sometimes came out with (spooky bullshit he realized with a sudden pang that he might not hear for awhile now) and the stuff in LA that he’d tried to leave behind along with the mask. Remembered the rumors that had followed Adam into the company - videos and betrayal and poison and burial - and played a hunch.

“If you’re not going to eat these,” he said, and reached across Adam to steal a bite-sized lump of fluffy egg from the plate, then popped it into his mouth, chewing and swallowing very deliberately before he continued, “then fork them over and I will.”

“Anyone ever tell you your bedside manner leaves a lot to be desired?” Adam griped, but after a moment, he picked up his fork again, a little awkward in his left hand, and scooped a pile of eggs onto the Eggo, making a kind of sad but serviceable breakfast sandwich that he finally dug into.

“That’s right,” he said. “Fill your mouth instead of running it.”

Adam made a reassuringly indignant sound at that, and didn’t stop shoveling down his food.

* * *

For all their big talk, they didn’t do anything sexy before crashing. Ricochet wouldn’t have needed much persuading - he figured an orgasm would be a decent apology for flattening the guy, even by accident; plus, though he would never in a million years have fed his ego by saying so out loud, Adam was a good lay: fun to wind up, athletic and competitive enough to keep up, creative enough to balance out his apparent inability to ever, ever shut up (even when they were pressed together in a not-so-out-of-the-way corner at Full Sail and, at least theoretically, trying not to get caught) - but he could tell Adam was too wiped to get much out of it.

It was a little weird; he was pretty sure they’d never spent this much time alone together without someone - sometimes even both of them - ending up on his knees. Still, he’d just nudged Adam into his bed, piled on some extra pillows for him to prop his wrist above his heart with, set the alarm on his phone for a concussion check in a couple of hours, killed the lights, and climbed in beside him.

“What happened to putting me up in the spare room?” Adam slurred into the pillow.

“Wasn’t actually planning on houseguests,” he said, shifting for a more comfortable position, ending up curled up on his side, facing the lump of pillows and comforter that Adam had become in the dark. “Some stuff piled up in there, waiting for me to find a place to put it. No sheets on the bed, unless you want to go make it.”

“I’m good,” Adam said drowsily. “Better not put your cold feet on me, though.”

“For a man who’s down to one good arm, you seem awfully confident I won’t smother you with one of these pillows.”

No response: Adam had either been left without a comeback, or already fallen asleep. Ricochet closed his eyes and counted the win


End file.
